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Qdrant vs Weaviate

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Qdrant and Weaviate built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 25 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Qdrant if…

Teams that want a choice of similarity metric rather than one fixed default, or that want the option to self-host the same open-source engine the managed cloud runs.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose Weaviate if…

Teams that want hybrid search included on every tier without an add-on, or that want an always-free cluster (not a time-limited trial) to build against before committing to a paid plan.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • Qdrant: A published, calculator-free entry price matters — Qdrant Cloud's Standard tier pricing is usage-based with no static per-month figure quoted, unlike some competitors' flat entry plans.
  • Weaviate: Predictable flat pricing matters more than granular control — per-dimension consumption billing means cost scales with embedding choices in a way a flat per-month plan doesn't.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Qdrant alternatives · Weaviate alternatives

19 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Qdrant documentationVisit Weaviate documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionQdrantWeaviate
Pricing
Free tierYesYes
Kind of free offerAlways freeAlways free
What the free plan includesA single-node cluster with 1 GB RAM and 4 GB disk, free forever, without high availability.One fully managed cluster per user, free forever and with no credit card, upgradable to paid at any time.
When the free offer endsNever — the free cluster is free forever.Never — the Engram tier is billed $0/mo, free forever.
Entry paid planSmallest paid Managed Cloud cluster (1 node, 0.5 vCPU, 2 GiB RAM, 8 GiB disk) on AWS us-east-1: $0.03566/hour, about $26.10/month, per Qdrant's own Cloud pricing calculator. Calculator estimate for AWS us-east-1; VAT excluded and expressly not a binding offer.Flex tier starts at $45/month, pay-as-you-go, no commitment.
Pricing modelUsage-based on the Standard tier: billed for compute (vCPU), memory (GB) and storage (GB) consumed by clusters, backup storage, and inference tokens for paid models.Consumption-based, charged on total vector dimensions stored plus storage, backups and optional AI services. Flex pricing starts around $0.00465 per 1M dimensions.
Infrastructure
RegionsStandard and Premium tiers run on AWS, Azure and GCP.Free: AWS, 2 regions. Flex and Premium shared: GCP and AWS, 7 regions. Premium dedicated: GCP, AWS and Azure, roughly 40 regions.
Uptime SLA
99.5% on the paid cloud tier; 99.9% on Premium.
Best effort on Free; 99.5% on Flex; 99.9% on Premium shared; 99.95% on Premium dedicated.
Vector
Max vector dimensionsUp to 65,535 dimensions for dense vectors65,535 dimensions maximum per embedding vector in Weaviate Database, because the embedding is stored using uint16. Stated for Weaviate Database generally; the FAQ gives no separate Weaviate Cloud cap.
Similarity metrics supportedDot product, Cosine similarity (implemented as dot-product over automatically normalized vectors), Euclidean distance and Manhattan distance.cosine (the default), dot, l2-squared, hamming and manhattan, set per vector index in vectorIndexConfig; the HFresh index supports only cosine and l2-squared.
Hybrid search (vector + keyword)Native hybrid queries combine dense semantic and sparse lexical (BM25) vectors in a single querySupported across all plans.
Metadata filteringSupported: conditions can be set on the payload and on the point id, combined with AND, OR and NOT clauses that nest arbitrarily.Filtered vector search combines vector search with structured, scalar filters, implemented as pre-filtering rather than post-filtering.
Support
Response time commitmentPublished as best effort, 10x5 and 24x7. The comparison table prints three response values against four support levels, so which tier gets which cannot be read off this page.Severity 1: none on Free, one business day on Flex, 4 hours on Premium shared, 1 hour on Premium dedicated. No comparable number, because a business day is not a fixed span.
Compliance
SOC 2SOC 2 Type 2 certified; compliance reports available on request through the Qdrant Trust Center.SOC 2 Type II, independently audited via Drata; Weaviate Cloud is SOC 2 audited and the report is in the trust portal.
HIPAAHIPAA certified; a Business Associate Agreement is available for Qdrant Managed Cloud.HIPAA compliant on Enterprise Cloud (AWS); in the plan comparison table HIPAA is marked available only on the Premium dedicated column.
GDPR / data residencyDPA offered for GDPR; cluster data is stored only in the cluster's deployment region.DPA: customer-selected cloud provider and hosting region are not changed without written consent; EEA transfers rely on EU standard contractual clauses.
Encryption at restAll storage volumes in Qdrant Managed Cloud are encrypted at rest; data in transit is protected with TLS.AES-256 or equivalent at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit; keys managed in cloud-provider KMS (AWS, GCP, Azure).
Customer-managed keysPremium tier customers can bring their own encryption keys for storage volumes.Encrypted volumes with customer keys listed only for the Premium dedicated plan; not available on Free, Flex or Premium shared. Plan table columns are Free, Flex, Premium shared, Premium dedicated.
Role-based access controlBuilt-in RBAC in the Qdrant Cloud Management Console, with permissions manageable at collection level.RBAC included on every Weaviate Cloud plan including Free; SSO/SAML only from Premium upward.
Private networking / VPCPrivate link connectivity from a Managed Cloud cluster to your VPC, available to Premium tier customers only.PrivateLink (AWS) listed only for the Premium dedicated plan; not available on Free, Flex or Premium shared.
Dedicated infrastructurePaid Managed Cloud clusters run on their own dedicated resources, isolated in hardened, unprivileged containers.Dedicated Cloud is a managed deployment on single-tenant infrastructure with no noisy neighbors, offered as the Premium plan's dedicated option.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

What the free plan includes

Qdrant
A single-node cluster with 1 GB RAM and 4 GB disk, free forever, without high availability.
Weaviate
One fully managed cluster per user, free forever and with no credit card, upgradable to paid at any time.
Sources (2) →
  • Qdrant Pricing ↗

    “The free tier includes 1GB RAM and 4GB disk storage, upgrading will get you a dedicated cluster. [...] The free tier is ideal for testing, and prototypes being limited to 1GB RAM and 4GB disk without high availability.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Weaviate Pricing ↗

    “always free - 1 cluster per user, upgrade to paid anytime.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

When the free offer ends

Qdrant
Never — the free cluster is free forever.
Weaviate
Never — the Engram tier is billed $0/mo, free forever.
Sources (2) →

Entry paid plan

Qdrant
Smallest paid Managed Cloud cluster (1 node, 0.5 vCPU, 2 GiB RAM, 8 GiB disk) on AWS us-east-1: $0.03566/hour, about $26.10/month, per Qdrant's own Cloud pricing calculator. Calculator estimate for AWS us-east-1; VAT excluded and expressly not a binding offer.
Weaviate
Flex tier starts at $45/month, pay-as-you-go, no commitment.
Sources (2) →

Pricing model

Qdrant
Usage-based on the Standard tier: billed for compute (vCPU), memory (GB) and storage (GB) consumed by clusters, backup storage, and inference tokens for paid models.
Weaviate
Consumption-based, charged on total vector dimensions stored plus storage, backups and optional AI services. Flex pricing starts around $0.00465 per 1M dimensions.
Sources (2) →
  • Qdrant Cloud Pricing ↗

    “Billing is calculated based on actual resource usage during the billing period. You're charged for compute (vCPU), memory (GB), storage (GB) consumed by your clusters, storage (GB) consumed by backups, and used inference tokens of paid models.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Weaviate Cloud Pricing ↗

    “Why is pricing based on the total number of vector dimensions? [...] You are also billed for persistent and backup storage of objects and their embeddings. [...] Vector dimensions Free from $0.00465 / 1M”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Regions

Qdrant
Standard and Premium tiers run on AWS, Azure and GCP.
Weaviate
Free: AWS, 2 regions. Flex and Premium shared: GCP and AWS, 7 regions. Premium dedicated: GCP, AWS and Azure, roughly 40 regions.
Sources (2) →
  • Qdrant Pricing ↗

    “Cloud Providers Depends on chosen infrastructure AWS, Azure, GCP AWS, Azure, GCP AWS, Azure, GCP Uptime SLA 99.5 Single AZ: 99.9, Multi AZ: 99.95”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Weaviate Pricing ↗

    “Cloud availability Cloud service provider AWS GCP, AWS GCP, AWS GCP, AWS, Azure Regions Limited (2) Limited (7) Limited (7) All (~40)”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

Uptime SLA

Qdrant

99.5% on the paid cloud tier; 99.9% on Premium.

Weaviate

Best effort on Free; 99.5% on Flex; 99.9% on Premium shared; 99.95% on Premium dedicated.

Sources (2) →

Max vector dimensions

Qdrant
Up to 65,535 dimensions for dense vectors
Weaviate
65,535 dimensions maximum per embedding vector in Weaviate Database, because the embedding is stored using uint16. Stated for Weaviate Database generally; the FAQ gives no separate Weaviate Cloud cap.
Sources (2) →

Similarity metrics supported

Qdrant
Dot product, Cosine similarity (implemented as dot-product over automatically normalized vectors), Euclidean distance and Manhattan distance.
Weaviate
cosine (the default), dot, l2-squared, hamming and manhattan, set per vector index in vectorIndexConfig; the HFresh index supports only cosine and l2-squared.
Sources (2) →
  • Collections — Qdrant Docs ↗

    “Qdrant supports these most popular types of metrics: Dot product: Dot - [wiki] Cosine similarity: Cosine - [wiki] Euclidean distance: Euclid - [wiki] Manhattan distance: Manhattan - [wiki] For search efficiency, Cosine similarity is implemented as dot-product over normalized vectors.”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Distance metrics | Weaviate Documentation ↗

    “If not specified explicitly, the default distance metric in Weaviate is [...] l2-squared The squared euclidean distance between two vectors. [...] manhattan The distance between two vector dimensions measured along axes at right angles.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

Metadata filtering

Qdrant
Supported: conditions can be set on the payload and on the point id, combined with AND, OR and NOT clauses that nest arbitrarily.
Weaviate
Filtered vector search combines vector search with structured, scalar filters, implemented as pre-filtering rather than post-filtering.
Sources (2) →
  • Filtering — Qdrant Docs ↗

    “With Qdrant, you can set conditions when searching or retrieving points. For example, you can impose conditions on both the payload and the id of the point. [...] Qdrant allows you to combine conditions in clauses. Clauses are different logical operations, such as OR, AND, and NOT. Clauses can be recursively nested into each other so that you can reproduce an arbitrary boolean expression.”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Filtering | Weaviate Documentation ↗

    “Weaviate provides powerful filtered vector search capabilities, allowing you to combine vector searches with structured, scalar filters. [...] Filtered vector search in Weaviate is based on the concept of pre-filtering.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

Response time commitment

Qdrant
Published as best effort, 10x5 and 24x7. The comparison table prints three response values against four support levels, so which tier gets which cannot be read off this page.
Weaviate
Severity 1: none on Free, one business day on Flex, 4 hours on Premium shared, 1 hour on Premium dedicated. No comparable number, because a business day is not a fixed span.
Sources (2) →

SOC 2

Qdrant
SOC 2 Type 2 certified; compliance reports available on request through the Qdrant Trust Center.
Weaviate
SOC 2 Type II, independently audited via Drata; Weaviate Cloud is SOC 2 audited and the report is in the trust portal.
Sources (2) →

HIPAA

Qdrant
HIPAA certified; a Business Associate Agreement is available for Qdrant Managed Cloud.
Weaviate
HIPAA compliant on Enterprise Cloud (AWS); in the plan comparison table HIPAA is marked available only on the Premium dedicated column.
Sources (2) →

GDPR / data residency

Qdrant
DPA offered for GDPR; cluster data is stored only in the cluster's deployment region.
Weaviate
DPA: customer-selected cloud provider and hosting region are not changed without written consent; EEA transfers rely on EU standard contractual clauses.
Sources (2) →

Encryption at rest

Qdrant
All storage volumes in Qdrant Managed Cloud are encrypted at rest; data in transit is protected with TLS.
Weaviate
AES-256 or equivalent at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit; keys managed in cloud-provider KMS (AWS, GCP, Azure).
Sources (2) →

Customer-managed keys

Qdrant
Premium tier customers can bring their own encryption keys for storage volumes.
Weaviate
Encrypted volumes with customer keys listed only for the Premium dedicated plan; not available on Free, Flex or Premium shared. Plan table columns are Free, Flex, Premium shared, Premium dedicated.
Sources (2) →

Role-based access control

Qdrant
Built-in RBAC in the Qdrant Cloud Management Console, with permissions manageable at collection level.
Weaviate
RBAC included on every Weaviate Cloud plan including Free; SSO/SAML only from Premium upward.
Sources (2) →

Private networking / VPC

Qdrant
Private link connectivity from a Managed Cloud cluster to your VPC, available to Premium tier customers only.
Weaviate
PrivateLink (AWS) listed only for the Premium dedicated plan; not available on Free, Flex or Premium shared.
Sources (2) →

Dedicated infrastructure

Qdrant
Paid Managed Cloud clusters run on their own dedicated resources, isolated in hardened, unprivileged containers.
Weaviate
Dedicated Cloud is a managed deployment on single-tenant infrastructure with no noisy neighbors, offered as the Premium plan's dedicated option.
Sources (2) →

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.

Credit card to startWeaviate: No
Audit logsQdrant: Audit logging, available on paid clusters, captures operations performed through the Qdrant API, including user and API key attribution, timestamp, target collection, and result of the action.
Support on entry paid planWeaviate: Email support on every tier including Free. Phone and Slack support start at Premium; a technical account team is an add-on there.
ISO 27001Weaviate: ISMS certified against ISO 27001, stated in the technical and organisational measures of the Data Processing Agreement.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Qdrant or Weaviate?

Qdrant: Smallest paid Managed Cloud cluster (1 node, 0.5 vCPU, 2 GiB RAM, 8 GiB disk) on AWS us-east-1: $0.03566/hour, about $26.10/month, per Qdrant's own Cloud pricing calculator. Calculator estimate for AWS us-east-1; VAT excluded and expressly not a binding offer.

Weaviate: Flex tier starts at $45/month, pay-as-you-go, no commitment.

Should I choose Qdrant or Weaviate?

Pick Qdrant if Teams that want a choice of similarity metric rather than one fixed default, or that want the option to self-host the same open-source engine the managed cloud runs.

Pick Weaviate if Teams that want hybrid search included on every tier without an add-on, or that want an always-free cluster (not a time-limited trial) to build against before committing to a paid plan.

Provider pages

QdrantOpen-source vector database with a free-forever cloud tier and four selectable similarity metrics.WeaviateOpen-source vector database with an always-free cluster tier and hybrid search included on every plan.

Related comparisons

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.